Monday, May 7, 2007

Why the AT?

Why the Appalachian Trail? Why honor your friend by hiking almost 2,200 miles through the wilderness? The answer for me is simple. Steve, Spencer, and I hiked the northern terminus at Mt. Katahdin in Maine in the summer of 2005 not long after Steve and Spencer hiked the southern terminus at Springer, MT in Georgia earlier that summer. We joked on our trip that one day it would be cool to hike the entire trail, for them, to connect the dots. When confronted with my friend's death later that year, I knew that the joke that we threw out without any thought of it being a serious goal would be the best way for me to honor him. My trip in Maine was the last time I saw Steve, and will be the moment that I hold on to during my entire thru-hike. I know that we have an ambitious goal of an 80 day thru-hike, and that this goal is half of the typical time that one takes to hike the 2,175 mile trail, yet somehow I know that we will have the extra intangibles to accomplish our trip.